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Popcru said on Sunday that it would provide legal assistance to eight police officers who have been arrested for murder and torture of a 25-year-old man in 2017.
“Popcru [The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union] supports them fully, and has made means for their legal representation,” the union’s spokesperson Richard Mamabolo said in a statement.
He said that the union was “disappointed” by the arrests.
Mamabolo said that the incident for which the officers were arrested, which took place on October 10, 2017, involved their investigation of an alleged drug den.
“On their arrival they found six men in the house when searching it, and they also found drugs in this house,” he said.
Mambolo alleged that the men in the house became “hostile”, called for others and then also assaulted police. It was in this context that the death of one man, Nigerian national Ibrahim Olamilekan Badmus, occurred, he claimed.
The eight are due in the Vanderbijlpark Court on Monday.
This week, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) announced that the officers, two women and six men, were arrested for the torture and murder of Badmus.
IPID spokesperson Moses Dlamini said Badmus was allegedly killed when the officers interrogated and suffocated him.
"According to the police, they had found drugs on the deceased, but this was a false story to cover up the torture and murder of the deceased."
"At the time, the police also alleged that they were attacked by 'drug dealers'," he said at the time.
He said two pathologists who conducted the post-mortem confirmed that the deceased had indeed been tortured.
